Taking a Look at Anxiety

Anxiety can often be viewed as a fear that someone experiences when they feel something terrible is about to happen and seeing no way out of the situation, whether thinking in the past, present, or future. Their are many different ways to cope with anxiety through methods like psychotherapeutic medication and psychotherapy. Anxiety often causes more trouble to a situation or thought and furthers anxiety so it is important to realize that anxiety can often be treated as long as we are willing to understand it’s effect human beings. Ghinassi, Winning, Starcevic, and Vladan discuss what anxiety is, where it comes from, and various methods of coping with anxiety through their books.

What is anxiety? Ghinassi and Winning (2010) state, “Anxiety appears to be fear mixed with other emotions and is more diffuse than fear, but nevertheless, it helps us react to threats and plan appropriate strategies to resolve the situation” (p. 45). Anxiety can be viewed as something that is helpful and at other times it can be viewed as something that consume our lives to the point that we cannot function which is why anxiety is often viewed as something that is not beneficial to us and that is the reason why it anxiety is classified as a psychological disorder. According to Ghinassi and Winning (2010), our daily life can often be interrupted through episodes of anxiety and can lead to an unfulfilling and difficult life. Many people will develop generalized anxiety disorder which can be classified as anxiety from just about anything such as the future, health, or financial stability.

Ghinassi and Winning (2010) claimed, “Approximately 6.8 million American adults, or about 3.1 percent of people age 18 and over, have GAD in a given year” (p. 51). GAD is another term for generalized anxiety disorder which is quite common in most adults in the United States according to the statistic given. It is normal for human beings to go through stages of fear or anxiety. These psychological disorders often involve environmental causes because of the child’s complex development through life (Ghinassi and Winning, 2010, p. 52). Some children face experiences which leave them in fear which causes even more fear of ever experiencing such a thing again in the future, thus anxiety begins. Most of the time generalized anxiety does not prepare nor protects the person what is they fear, and it usually ends up causing more trouble for the person experiencing anxiety.